Now that you mention it, it could affect the American market a couple of ways, each for the worse.

First off, it could completely kill the used book trade here. No loss for the publishers who see the secondary market as thieves pillaging sales, even if the work has been out of print for decades. Suddenly, none of those books can be resold because the ink's faded.

Textbook companies would love it. Everybody having to buy new textbooks every semester would be a big hit with them. Not so much with their captive audiences.

It could also hit the academic sector. Direct quoting might or might not be fair use, but having the writing fade would make books completely useless for reference purposes. Instead of having to keep your library up to date by buying a few new books every year, you suddenly have to re-buy the whole thing every six months. It also makes direct quoting hard. Publishers win.

In the DVD world, there was a lot of talk, nearly all negative when Circuit City and one of the DVD publishers came out with DVDs that only lasted for a few days after opening, and I think Disney might have dabbled with the concept also. It always flopped, big time. If anything, that publisher will get a negative rap, and people will stop buying any of their books for fear that they will be buying one with disappearing ink.

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Originally Posted by Connallmac

As I recall those DVDs were marketed as a rental that you didn't have to return because they pulled a Mission Impossible. It really wouldn't have been a bad idea if it didn't leave your home looking like AOL carpet bombed it. That, plus the inherent, egregious wastefullness of it.

It was called DIVX (Digital Video Express) and was an attempt at a different way to rent movies. With some titles you could then pay more and "own" the movie permanently if you chose to (as long as you used it on the authorized player/account). There were lots of problems including players that initially cost almost double what a regular DVD player cost at the time.